New Horizon

In the far flung future, humanity and its offshoots have colonized Epsilon Eridani IVb and been living there for about two hundred years. There are problems, of course; an uneven distribution of technology, a couple of pureblooded idealists, some notoriously enterprising individuals... and the wildlife. But that hasn't stopped the peoples from making ten major cities all over the globe, and they're certainly not giving up now!

New Horizon is a tabletop RPG set in the future on an alien planet with a wide frontier. Players take the role of random people from all walks of life who just happen to get caught up in whatever adventure the GM creates. The RPG utilizes the VOLT system, built around two twenty-sided dice and swift, decisive skill checks. While only recently developed, it still manages to be entertaining and intriguing, allowing for all manner of quests and providing a rich but not constraining backstory. As a bonus, the starter's guide is available in a free-to-read PDF, and excerpts from the other manuals are also available as previews.

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Tropes used in New Horizon include:

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The human view of the Wafan Rebellion at the time, before they were recognized as living beings with their own rights. These days, the Wafans are considered people, so this trope doesn't come into play as much-there are heroic Wafans just as much as there are crooked or villainous ones.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: While Aesir Wafans are the only race explicitly stated to come in rainbow shades, the implied possibility for other Wafans (and in-game artwork for Medeans) suggest this trope is prevalent.
• Anachronism Stew: Plenty of the places in the world are like that, if only because the people are trying to revive cultures and ways of life that have been dead for hundreds of years. The fact they need advanced technology and weapons to survive doesn't help either.
• Animorphism: Medeans.
• Berserk Button: If you are a Jotun, do NOT call an Aesir a human. Seriously, don't.
• Character Customization: Eighteen abilities, numerous traits and backgrounds, Point Build System... Mmmmyep.
• Chunky Salsa Rule
• Color Coded for Your Convenience: While not present in the setting, the rulebook explicitly states that there's a 'white die" and a "black die". Naturally, the black die is the one that can roll critical hits/failures.
• Combat Medic: Soldiers have the ability to stop bleeding, meaning they can attempt to prevent people from dying, though they will still need to see a medic or take at lest 2 ranks in physician to be able to help them fully recover on the spot.
• Creating Life: What humans did when they created Wafans. It worked out...in the end, anyway.
• Critical Hit: Bit different than usual. Rolling a one on a black die gurantees a sucess...but the level of success is determined by the white die's value.
• Critical Failure: Same as above, only you need to roll a twenty on the black die.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Subverted, it's the anti-rejection drugs that have may this effect. Although it's compounded by social stigmas against all Prometheans and substance abuse that many Prometheans face.
  • This has become a self continuing cycle, where a few individual Prometheans having problems reflects badly on the whole race, and then the social stigmas cause more mental problems that just keep on compounding and feeding the cycle.
  • Adverted for Wafans, who may share the same trait list for cybernetic enhancements, but are otherwise not effected by added cybernetics since, technically, they are 100% machines.
• Damage Reduction
• Damage Typing: There's injury damage and stun damage.
• Demihuman: If the Wafans don't qualify, the Medeans certainly do.
• Eagle Land : Xanadu's nearly unmatchable air force and powerful military, as well as its strong conservative politics and large population. They also happen to be an industrial powerhouse and hold some of the world's best institutes of higher learning.
• Everything Is Trying to Kill You: The world's wildlife is unfamiliar with humans, for the most part, and thus unafraid of them. One species has become familiar with humans.... and thinks they taste good.
• Extreme Omnivore: Grim Stalkers, the aforementioned species, more than qualify, seeing as how they eat Wafans and digest them.
• Fantastic Caste System: Medeans for the most part belong to a caste system that acts like a monarchy trying to shape the newly formed Medean race and culture.
• Fantastic Racism: Xanadu is explicitly stated to be a bit opposed to Prometheans... who are not only cyborgs, but the second-most human-like race in the entire setting. Must be the whole Olympian human purity thing. At least they can get along with Wafans alright.
• Gatling Good: Yes, you can buy Miniguns and thier related cousins, the chain and Gatling guns. Though they are heavy and expensive to buy and keep supplied with ammo, they more than make up for it with their ability to make Swiss cheese out of anything that moves, more so with Armor piercing ammo.
• Guns vs. Swords: While Close combat weapons do more damage to the wildlife and armored opponents as a group, and damage can increase with an increase of strength and combat skill, firearms still are quite strong. Rifles and rail guns in particular can be just as effective.
• Hollywood Cyborg: Prometheans.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: In the back story, Humans almost wiped out their own race twice before deciding not to keep all their eggs in one basket anymore, and packed it in with their good buddies the Wafans to start colonies on other planets.
  • The setting in general provides a more Humans Are Flawed feeling.
• Hungry Jungle: The jungles of Narehl are very dangerous, and only the knights of Narehl and very skilled hunters dare to venture into it's depths. There are tree dwelling octopi which can drop down and strangle you, so no one will blame you if you don't want to go there.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: If you invest enough points into ranged combat and money into high end guns, you could pull this off.
• Metamorphosis: Medeans are humans who've used Medea to splice their genes with those of a native animal.
• More Dakka: Most ranged weapons can attack multiple times in the same turn, usually the chance to hit is low though.
• Non-Player Character:
• Our Jotuns Are All The Same: While the Jotuns are the largest race on NH, and can be as twice as tall as a human if not bigger. Otherwise, they fit this trope to the T.
• Palmtree Panic: The Port of Narehl and the surrounding beaches are like this, and are thus popular vacation spots.
• Play-By-Post Games: The forums for New Horizon have this feature, complete with online tools for creating characters and dice rolls.
• Point Build System
• Port Town: The Port of Narehl is the big one for NH, as it's at the mouth of a large river and the ocean. Their are plenty of other large cities that are port towns as well.
• Ridiculously Human Wafans: The rulebook goes out of its way to point out that Wafans are people, not robots, because clearly robots cannot be people.
  • To clarify: While they technically fit the trope, being called a robot is an insult to Wafans. Word of God states this is primarily due to hardware differences and is about equivalent to a human being called an animal.
• Schizo-Tech: Due to lack of resources, technology is unevenly distributed across the population. This leads to such fun situations as a Wafan using archery to hunt or a Promethean buying a middle-ages shield. But then again, a compound bow being wielded by a being that can bench press a car does have certain unpleasant implications.
• Servant Race: The Wafans were created as this. Being fully sapient in their own right, this state of affairs didn't last too long.
• Sex Bot: Aesir females were once nothing more than toys for wealthy men. Now that they have beem emancipated, they marry them and take all their money the old fashioned way; divorce.
• Six Races: Jotun Wafans are stout, the Medeans are fairy, Olympians are eugenically improved humans, either Prometheans or Vanir Wafans are High Men, and the Aesir Wafans are cute. Of course these are all more like guidelines anyway...
• Sourcebook: The RPG books and the Compendium
• Space Western: The Walk of Man faction is basically one big Wild West setting, with monsters and swords thrown in. And ro--er, Wafans.
• Stuff Blowing Up: The miner background allows you to set and detonate explosives.
• Wafan sexual: Wafans come fully equipped, even the Jotuns. The latter is the subject of many speculative school girl glances.
• Wafan girl: Wafans have genders, so there are male and female versions.
• Under the Sea: With Wafans, Cyborgs, and Medeans all able to take traits to breath and fight under the water, and there are plenty of monsters and treasure under the oceans. Olympian humans however have to find some workaround.
• Underwater City: Aquilon has several underwater cities throughout the world.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: The Rusty Stars started out as a political movement to modernize the Walk of Man, but after the death of their leader, they've fallen into this trope. It doesn't help that their new leader is the former lover of the old one, either.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The Faenorr are the result of splicing human DNA into native ratmolethings. They're pretty much described as gremlins, and treated as trainable pets at best.
  • Also, the Medeans organize their hierarchy around how "human" they look. So yeah...